The Writer’s Corner: The Craft of Writing Political Thrillers

I write thrillers.

Unfortunately, all that tells you about my books is that there will be times when the reader’s pulse will accelerate, their adrenaline will pump, and they will be drawn in by the action and the danger of the plot. The word thriller gives you no clarity to the actual plot found in my stories. That is because that classification is a very wide umbrella under which are huddled diverse subgenres. There are crime thrillers, historical thrillers, spy thrillers, and supernatural thrillers. If none of those appeal, then maybe you’ll be pulled in by a psychological thriller or a techno-thriller. If you are a fan of Christian fiction, there are end times thrillers and, I would be willing to bet, Amish thrillers. Whatever you are into, there’s a thriller for you.

The books I write fall under the subgenre of political thrillers. With all the options out there, why did I choose that particular one? I grew up reading Ian Fleming novels about James Bond. My dad had bought the collection—49 cent paperbacks—and he stored them in the attic. I came across them one day and began to devour them one after another. Each one didn’t take long to read, because in those days thrillers were short—200 to 300 pages. I loved those books, and they stayed with me.

In fourth grade, I discovered another book that would change my life. It was All the President’s Men, the classic Woodward and Bernstein insider story about bringing down the president of the United States. I loved it. It was then that my parents and I realized that the political bug had sunk its hungry little mandibles into me, and it was not going to let go.

Years later when Lynn and I married, we left New York and moved to Washington with a lot of dreams and very little money. Sadly, I didn’t have much time to read, and even when I did, who could afford a new book? Those near me knew I still loved a good story, so for the next years, whenever my birthday would roll around, either Lynn or my sister-in-law would buy me the latest Tom Clancy or John Grisham book. Those two are masters in the thriller genre, and they became the total of my fiction diet for quite a long time. But if I was going to feast on any two authors, they were the ones to choose.

Grisham and Clancy were very different writers from one another. It wasn’t just the legal thriller versus the military techno-thriller disparity. Stylistically, they were worlds apart. Clancy was more traditional in his approach to developing his franchise around his protagonist, Jack Ryan. Grisham, though, was somehow able to create and develop a new hero for each of his books. It still amazes me that he was able to pull that off so well for so long.

The disparity between the two was good for me, because it widened the breadth of my fictional intake. I could never have replicated Clancy’s technical military prowess. He was an encyclopedia of weapons and tactics. However, the political and geopolitical scenarios that he constructed were right up my alley, and I drew from his masterful skill in those realms.

What I learned from Grisham is best illustrated in his tenth book, released in 1999, called The Testament. In this beautifully crafted novel, Nate O’Riley, an alcoholic lawyer fresh out of rehab, is sent by his firm to the Brazilian jungle to track down the heiress to an eleven-billion-dollar fortune. What is the woman, Rachel Lane, doing in South America? She is a missionary to the people of the Amazon. That’s all I want to say about the plot, except that everything that O’Riley believes is important in this world is soon challenged by this woman who is willing to give up everything to follow the call given to her by God.

Grisham did a brilliant job of seamlessly weaving that faith element into his plot. So many Christian novelists seem to shoehorn the gospel into their books, but he made it part of the drama. The Testament showed me it was possible to bring thrillers and faith together in a way that didn’t feel like a Christian novel, but a mainstream novel that had a Christian faith element to it.

I write thrillers. More specifically, I write political thrillers with a heavy dose of military action and an element of faith cleanly woven into the fabric. I write this style of novel because of who I am, my literary influences, and the work I do that stokes my passion. But most of all, I write this type of thriller because it is what I love to read, and I figure that if I love to read it, there are probably quite a few others who will love to read it also.

—Joel C. Rosenberg